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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Ben Coates
Started reading
December 17, 2020
I bought a ticket from a young crewman who was dressed in a smart sailor’s outfit, but apparently shared the common Dutch belief that there was no such thing as too much hair gel.
An inscription on the dike provided a summary of what had become the guiding philosophy of the Dutch people: ‘A living nation builds its own future.’
Randstad – the diamond-shaped constellation of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Den Haag that formed the heart of the Netherlands – the situation was even more extreme. There, roughly1500 people lived on every square kilometre of urban land. Not coincidentally, one of the few places to come close in terms of density was similarly waterlogged Bangladesh.
Space was at such a premium that graves in the Netherlands were usually only rented for a decade or two, after which their inhabitants would be dug up and reburied in a communal knekelput, or mass grave.
They even had a word for it: maakbaarheid, the capacity to remake and control the world around you. I often noticed that things someone who was British or French or German might think of as beautiful – a wild meadow, a tangled hedge, a stormy beach – my Dutch friends viewed as an affront to common sense and discipline.
Leigh Fermor’s motto was solvitur ambulando – ‘it is solved by walking’ – and with that in mind I closed the book and left the café to complete my journey.
